I auditioned for the Stig; all I got was ACA lies

A Current Affair’s road safety crusade could be about to enter slippery legal territory after it used recycled footage from a two-year-old Top Gear audition tape in a faked attempt to “trap” a hoon driver.

Last night on ACA, the heavily promoted opening segment, entitled “Car Hoon” and tagged with an “exclusive” watermark, ran three full minutes of footage of a mystery man called “Carlo” driving his souped-up Nissan somewhere on Sydney’s roads.

“We’ll let the video speak for itself, because we want your help to find him,” intoned host Tracey Grimshaw before airing the video of ”Carlo” “drifting” across double lines to the network’s heavy metal soundtrack. At the end of the segment, reporter Tom Steinfort issued a shout for viewers to catch “Crazy Carlo”, and promised a follow-up on tonight’s program.

“But first we have to find him and that’s where you come in. We believe his name is Carlo — Crazy Carlo.” Steinfort then aired a cleaned-up image of the vehicle’s registration.

But Crikey can reveal that the source for the story was the YouTube clip below, uploaded to the web on September 26 last year. The clip clearly identified the driver’s first and last name and its intended purpose — an audition tape for the mysterious Stig test-driver on the local version of Top Gear.

“Hi everybody at Freehand, my name is Carlo Arena and I would like to be your Stig.”

(For those unaware, The Stig is an white-clad character on both versions of Top Gear who test-drives vehicles under a cloak of anonymity. Top Gear’s production company Freehand issued a shout out for Stig auditions way back in 2007. Arena submitted an audition and hadn’t heard anything back — until last night.)

Damningly for Steinfort and Nine, the YouTube source not only includes lingering footage of the driver, but also reveals his first and last name, which Steinfort claims not to know. None of this footage was aired by Nine.

Crikey contacted Arena and his representative (Arena was in a meeting consulting with his lawyers) told Crikey there were only two copies of the video — one retained by Arena and the other sent to Freehand. The YouTube video was uploaded about a year after the initial audition tape was submitted and the poster and the initial commenters were far from friendly. Nine secured the rights to Top Gear at around the same time the video was posted.

“Look at the date on the YouTube video. You can draw your own conclusions,” Arena’s representative said.

Crikey understands that the Nissan in question was sold just months after the video was shot, on February 22, 2008, and the registration was binned when it later became a track car — rendering Nine’s shout-out pointless.

On the Freehand website, there are explicit instructions that the identity of the driver submitting tapes to the company would not be revealed. Under the section “How to Apply”, the company says the following:

Record anything you think demonstrates for what you are and what you can do … and if you want to be The Stig — persuade us you know how to drive and we’ll NEVER reveal who you are — and you won’t either.”

Arena’s representative admitted to Crikey that the stunt was “dangerous”, said the road in question had been blocked off with other vehicles.

We called Freehand executive producer Peter Abbott to ask whether he had liaised with Nine over the tape but were told he was “asleep” in Los Angeles, despite it being 4pm Los Angeles time when we called. Another Freehand employee, who did not want to be named, told Crikey they had received “thousands” of audition tapes along the lines of Arena’s but were “certain” copies hadn’t been released to Nine.

Steinfort and A Current Affair refused to respond to Crikey’s requests for urgent comment.

But YouTube commenters on the source for the story were damning.

“So how did A Current Affair get the tape? If they want viewers to help them find him, why didn’t they show the video of him speaking to the camera at the start?” said one.

“I love how they slap “ACA exclusive” on the video - it’s on YouTube ffs, not exactly exclusive”, said another.

Once more the complete wastes of space who have the gall to call themselves “journalists” have been shown to be arrogant, incompetant fools. The real journos must cringe everytime ACA goes feral with another exclusive. What a sad demise of a once quality program.

I’m no stranger to the dull, non-sensical, no-story story style of journalism favoured by ACA. Needless to say as I watched the story it was clear it was either a pro-film or a set up: being filmed from all angles, inside the car, outside of the car, hand positions on the wheel, different portions of road etc.

And what was the weird bit at the end - the call out for people to help identify Crazy Carlo. They had the bloody licence plate number, ACA in all their moral responsibility should have simply given the footage to police.

Of course Today Tonight is no better. They had the no-story story of the red haired girl barred from school from having “Twighlight inspired” red locks. Full stop. So, bad school, freedom of expression, yada yada yada. Flick back over to ACA and the story goes along the lines that Twighlight girl died her hair so as to stop from being bullied for being a natural ginger.

What was the real story behind this non-story story? Sadly, we may never know.

Another piece of crap journalism from the free to air networks. I cannot wait for the ABC 24-hour news channel so I never have to watch these cretins and morons again. What more can you expect from purveyors of tampons and toothpaste advertising whose sole aim is to bore us witless with second-rate programming and moronic advertising. The unfortunate reality is that so many people watch this drivel and do not demand higher standards.

The tragedy is that there are decent news and investigative stories out there, probably begging for airtime; where was ACA to expose HIH, or Storm financial?

Instead they produce this tripe, and leave the real work to Australian Story. Probably some editor figured ‘Crazy Carlos’ hooning around the streets, or a cat up a tree, is more interesting to the elderly viewers than ‘boring stories about finance and superannuation’. Woops.

There seems to be an expectation that ACA and TT provide quality journalism and such anger when they don’t! So why do people keep watching?? Greg Angelo (and others), nobody is forcing you to watch this tripe - there is an ‘off’ button on your TV and there are other channels.

The sooner people stop watching, the sooner these programs will disappear (yeah, I know, I’m dreaming…………).

Look at it from a another level…the story was a complete fabrication, so why is Channel nine going to such lengths to convince us that “all” young drivers are hoons?…this network is even prepared to lie to do it.

The confiscation of vehicles is gathering steam now…and we the public are being conditioned to accept it via the implanted notions such as that clever little attempted piece of social engineering we saw last night on ACA…soon we will all be “hoons”…hoons have no property rights.

I did a search in ‘google news’ to find the story and it has a link to a Herald Sun story posted 6hrs ago but click on the link and it’s been removed!! Is Eddie putting the heat on a major advertising recipient? hmmmm

ACA have now posted a new story/video on their site and is claiming to have witheld the name deliberately, conveniently stating that top gear is a SBS tv show and also involved the police, who are seeking Carlos to apparently charge him. It had to be some of the most amazing face-saving spin i have ever seen.

Agreed! They brazened it out last night! And TT joined them in THEIR version of the man as a hoon,-but from the perspective of Top Gear being a bad influence. It’s a mystery why they did that….
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I watch TT and ACA………………………..

I too condemned them as journalistic crap. But they are not!

Tabloid they may well be. Spin they do/distort they do.

As a pragmatist, I accept ALL of that, because they are the only public voice for the disaffected and bullied. And the ordinary Joe/Joess, is kicked around by systems in particular,-with monotonous regularity.

They (TT/ACA) have become a ‘blood sport’ for criticism. It struck me some time ago that they have an important-yes! important, role to play.

Do they use these people? Well of course they do;-but it’s reciprocal.

I enjoy ‘Foreign Correspondent in partic,- but I am also happy to watch these two programmes for precisely the reasons I’ve said.

………………………………..and frankly I think it is elitist snobbery to condemn them out of hand……………..!!

Nah, the idea anyone actually watches corporate media is a hoax designed to extract advertising funds from goosey business types think a cabbage knows how to work a credit card. I know this to be a fact ‘cause I asked a lettuce and as we all know, a lettuce is much smarter than a cabbage so it must be true.

Frontline was the best public affairs show ever — Mike Moore at the helm — very strong stories. Followed by Kartoon Krazies.

As Paul Barry somewhat euphemistically pointed out, Australia no longer has any investigative journalism program on the commercial stations and are not interested in doing real journalism at all. Four Corners springs to mind as virtually the only such format on the ABC. ‘Foreign Correspondent’ was 1) foreign content, and 2) mainly asociological junk.

We inhabit a dumbed down, 1984 world, or country, at least. Good thing there is good text journalism on the net, that’s right, aren’t TV advertising revenues suffering due to people not watching it anymore?